Terrorists motivated by religion

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Michael

This isn’t a shocker:

The hospitalized Boston Marathon bombing suspect charged Monday with using a weapon of mass destruction has told investigators that he and his brother were motivated by religion but were not in contact with overseas terrorists or groups, officials said.

Several officials familiar with the initial interrogation of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev described his behavior during questioning as cooperative.

A senior government official said Tsarnaev has told investigators — by writing some answers down, and by nodding yes or shaking his head no to others — that he and his brother were not in touch with any overseas terrorists or groups.

Tsarnaev, who has injuries to his tongue preventing him from speaking properly, also indicated that he and his brother conceived the bombing attack on their own, and were motivated by religious fervor.

And what is the key underlying factor in religion? Everyone say it with me: faith. It doesn’t take some overseas organization to motivate a person to effectively random violence on a massive scale. With faith, anything is possible. I mean. It’s fucking random. It isn’t a way of thinking or knowing at all.

Don’t expect to hear too much about religion’s role in this (much less faith’s). The left-wing media is going to bury this key factor and the right-wing media will speak of the motivations here only in terms of “radical Islam”. (Why “radical Christianity” doesn’t appear to be a thing, I don’t know. That religion has more than its fair share of brutes, past and present.)

To digress, I’ve been perplexed by another issue surrounding the surviving terrorist fuck. Apparently people would like to deem him an enemy combatant and strip him of the rights afforded to citizens under the Constitution. It is absolutely beyond me that the nature and magnitude of a crime should make a difference. Once we start walking down that road, we start calling accused murderers “enemy combatants” – guilty or not. And why stop there? Stealing gum from that store undermines the U.S. economy, you economic terrorist. Enemy combatant! Like we need to tip the balance of power any further into the hands of the government.

Filed under: News, Religions | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Thought of the day

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Michael

I find it amazing that I’ve yet to meet a Christian who has interpreted a piece of the Bible in a way which doesn’t match with his or her own personal views. Just imagine what technology and knowledge would look like if scientists behaved this way. Our streets and buildings would be as dark as North Korea’s.

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

Lyrid Shower

Posted on April 20, 2013 by Michael

I really need to get back to my astronomy alerts.

Lyrid shower

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Recent news

Posted on April 20, 2013 by Michael

The biggest story of the week needs no link. They killed one terrorist fuck and caught his terrorist fuck of a brother. The city of Boston, Boston Police, ATF, FBI, and all the law enforcement proved themselves to be extraordinary throughout this whole ordeal. I frequently say not to talk to the police and to never give up your rights, but this is one of those times where if the police wanted to search my person or property in their efforts to find such dangerous individuals, I don’t think I would have impeded them. (That said, I still really like, appreciate, and support things like this.)

A fertilizer plant in Texas exploded, destroying a portion of a small town and killing many. It has been found that the plant failed to report the excessive amount of flammable materials it had, as required by the government. It isn’t clear if that contributed to the blast, but it is clear that any argument that private industry will do the right thing without regulation is bunk – just imagine how many companies would have unsafe practices if they weren’t willing to break the law like this one apparently did.

David Ortiz, DH for the Boston Red Sox, told Fenway today that “This is our fucking city.” The FCC chairman Tweeted this in response: David Ortiz spoke from the heart at today’s Red Sox game. I stand with Big Papi and the people of Boston. The same lack of action should happen every time someone swears on television or pops out a nipple, but I’m glad our government’s censorship board has at least a little perspective.

Kansas has passed an anti-abortion law arbitrarily defining life as beginning at fertilization. I thought all these Republican-led legislatures were about the economy. I’m shocked – shocked! – that they’re really about ill-conceived/considered social policy.

Maine’s Governor, Paul LePage, has once again made an ass of himself. He has claimed that a wind turbine at one of the state’s university campuses has an electric motor that’s used when people visit. A spokesperson literally laughed out loud at the comment, shooting down the false accusation. And why did LePage say something so stupid? It isn’t that he’s against wind power; he actually once lamented an environmental agency that blocked a private company from installing turbines on a mountainside. He just doesn’t like that the project is government-based. Apparently there isn’t a single thing the government can do successfully in the small minds of so many Republicans.

The Boy Scouts have proposed allowing gay youth but not gay adults. There’s no way around saying it: This betrays not merely an ignorant mindset, but a truly stupid world perspective and understanding. It is not inherent or characteristic that gay adults seek to molest, rape, or in any other way harm children. You’re an awful person if you think otherwise.

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: | 5 Comments »

Thought of the day

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Michael

Since the early 90’s gun background checks have denied about 2 million sales to people not allowed to own the weapons. Such checks only cover a minority of all gun purchases. So why not expand this process to cover more people? Why don’t members of the U.S. Senate care about preventing felons from purchasing guns? What part of the second amendment is being protected by not taking a peak to see if someone committed an armed robbery in the past?

Fuck you, NRA. And double fuck you, Senate.

Filed under: Misc | Tagged: , | 4 Comments »

Why New Yorkers should consider Anthony Weiner for mayor

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Michael

As just about everyone knows, Anthony Weiner went from being a U.S. House member from New York to resigning as a result of a sexual picture he mistakenly Tweeted to a woman who wasn’t his wife. And as just about everyone should know, there were only two problems with what he did (from a public standpoint). One, he wasn’t careful enough about his online actions, thus sending a lewd photo of himself. I consider this to be pretty minor because I wouldn’t be stopped from voting for someone who has nude or lewd photos online, but there is a problem with him sending the picture over a social media feed where people didn’t sign up for that sort of thing. Two, he lied and denied about his affair. That’s pretty much never the way to go with these things.

As I wrote about Gen. Petraeus a few months ago, these sex scandals are hardly even stories. Unless the official involved had his office or political/military decisions compromised as a result of an affair, I do not care. That appears to be the case with Petraeus, so that was a non-story. As for Weiner, the only story was his lying. And now that some time has passed, he’s hoping that he can get by that with a huge political comeback:

Democrat Anthony Weiner, who resigned from Congress in disgrace two years ago, is weighing a bid for New York mayor, but a poll released on Tuesday suggests his political comeback would be an uphill battle.

Only 40 percent of city voters say they would consider voting for him, while 52 percent said they would not, according to the NBC New York-Marist poll.

Among Democrats, his chances were slightly higher, with 46 percent saying they were open to a Weiner candidacy and 50 percent opposed to the idea.

Weiner’s standing with the public has improved in the two years since he admitted to sending lewd messages to women and resigned from his seat in the House representing parts of Queens and Brooklyn.

He had been considered a front-runner to be the city’s next mayor but when he resigned just a quarter of voters polled thought he should run for mayor.

For those New Yorkers who once supported Weiner but no longer do, I think they should reconsider. If their problem with him is the fact that he lied about everything (and for some time, at that), then there’s nothing I can say about that. Not voting for a guy because of his public dishonesty is perfectly valid. However, if people aren’t voting for him because he cheated on his wife, I say boo. That’s an issue for him and his wife, not the citizenry at large. He isn’t a lesser lawmaker and leader because he isn’t a good husband. Infidelity certainly isn’t anything to praise, but it isn’t a federal crime.

I don’t know if Weiner is the right choice for New York City mayor. I live 6 hours away and don’t have an interest in the politics of big cities, much less living in one. However, I do believe that Weiner deserves fair consideration based upon his policy and lawmaking record. Leave his personal life out of it.

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Boston

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Michael

The events in Boston are still fluid, so most any comment would be premature. However, I do find this quote from Mr. Rogers to be appropriate:

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’

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PZ Myers is to philosophy as creationists are to science

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Michael

I was bouncing around YouTube today when I started watching the beginning of Thunderf00t’s 3-part series about how feminism is poisoning atheism. A clip of PZ Myers showed him re-defining atheism as such:

Atheism is the radical notion that we should live our lives by the principles of reason and evidence – by science.

As I’ve said so many times, atheism is only descriptive. To say that it implies any ‘shoulds’ or ‘should nots’ is to clearly state that it is normative. PZ has had problems with this in the past. He believes that atheism has with it particular values, and his ‘reasoning’ is that atheists themselves all have values, thus atheism does, too. To see the fat idiocy of such an argument, one only need to replace atheism with another descriptive position such as, say, aunicornism: Aunicornist all have values, and so aunicornism also has values. Indeed, I can even define these values! (Surprise, they happen to be exactly the same as mine!) This is why we can say with confidence that there is broad-based agreement on a whole host of complex issues amongst people who do not believe in unicorns.

If PZ actually understood the difference between normative claims and descriptive claims, he would absolutely never make the asinine arguments he does. It’s quite clear that he has an impossible to respect motivation: He wants to impose his particular values on the atheist community at large. It’s wonderful that this will never work – since atheism is 100% descriptive and nothing else, there’s no way to approach his faulty goals without necessarily ostracizing a large number of atheists (sort of like the Republicans have done with their accusations of ‘RINO’ and demands for strict conservatism in the party) – but I do find it distressing that there’s someone out there supposedly on the side of atheists and causes commonly supported by Gnu Atheists who would so willingly attempt to destroy a community through wanton and intentional fracturing.

It’s a common practice of universities to offer its employees free or reduced classes. As a professor, it’s likely that PZ could take whatever course he wants without incurring any costs. I only hope that he finds the time to wonder into an introductory philosophy course. His creationist-level thinking is embarrassing and, worse, wholly detrimental.

Filed under: Atheism/Humanism, Philosophy | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

People become Republicans because of religion

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Michael

At least for the vast majority, that is. See here:

With no debate, Republicans at the party’s spring meeting here on Friday unanimously approved a number of resolutions, including one that reaffirmed the party’s opposition to same-sex marriage.

“The Republican National Committee affirms its support for marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and as the optimum environment in which to raise healthy children for the future of America,” the resolution read. The 157 RNC members present approved it in a voice vote.

I’ve made the claim in the past that the reason people turn to the GOP is out of their conservative Christianity. To me, this is a very tiny, very obvious claim. Basically dishonest people who aren’t interested in critical thinking (or doing any research, but I digress), such as the odious Michael Hartwell, have tried to spin my statement in a way where in order to prove it I would have to explicitly know the minds of every single Republican. Under his requirements, we could never surmise why anyone becomes anything if the group we’re discussing is sufficiently large. (This is interesting, too, since he has gone the racist route of claiming that blacks vote for Democrats because they benefit from and like handouts.)

At any rate, I think this is all quite obvious: Most people who become Republican are first fundamentally religious, soon recognizing that there is a political party which reflects their religiosity. The re-affirmation of the GOP’s opposite to marriage equality is a perfect example of this because there are no good (or even honest) secular arguments against allowing same-sex couples their constitutionally guaranteed right to marriage. That is, it is the base Christianity that underlies the Republican party that has caused this vote and view; we don’t live in some backwards world where people became bigoted Republicans all on their own, later noticing that a particular cultural religion happens to exactly reflect their positions.

Filed under: News, Religions, Same-sex marriage | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

Jesus Christ

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Michael

Jesus Christ

Filed under: Humor, Religions | Tagged: | Leave a comment »

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